The administrations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have all put in place economic policies designed to increase growth, reduce poverty, and improve governance. In Thailand, the government is taking a more activist role, a change from the previous, more hands-off approach. In both Indonesia and Malaysia, new policies reduce the activist role of the state, creating greater predictability and transparency. Better governance remains a key to growth, with many reforms within governments' reach. While many of the policies focus on the medium term, there is an acceptance of the need for prudent short-term management. The open question is whether progress on structural changes can persist when the short-term macroeconomic picture becomes more challenging.

We assess the quantitative effects of the 1997–98 banking crisis in Asia at both the macroeconomic and bank levels, comparing our findings to broader studies of banking crises. Asia's crisis was both more severe and more costly than others but showed little evidence of prolonged bank runs. We assess the nature of reforms using measures designed to address externalities or market structure, information asymmetries, and legal infrastructure. We compare these measures to results from Barth, Caprio, and Levine (2000) with respect to the effects of banking structure and regulation on financial development, finding that reforms to date have underemphasized private monitoring and have concentrated too many assets in state-owned institutions. Despite extensive efforts at broadening legal infrastructure, progress has been poor, especially in Indonesia and Thailand.